Fate! There is no fate. Between the thought and the success God is the only agent. Fate is not the ruler, but the servant of Providence.

Man must be disappointed with the lesser things of life before he can comprehend the full value of the greater.

Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud--and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.

Not in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul within, lies the empire of man aspiring to be more than man.

There is no policy like politeness; and a good manner is the best thing in the world either to get a good name, or to supply the want of it.

Self-confidence is not hope; it is the self-judgment of your own internal forces in their relation to the world without, which results from the failure of many hopes and the non-realization of many fears.

Revenge is a common passion; it is the sin of the uninstructed. The savage deems it noble;but the religion of Christ, which is the sublime civilizer, emphatically condemns it. Why? Because religion ever seeks to ennoble man; and nothing so debases him as revenge.